Lindsey Haugen "I Am A Killer"

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Billingsgazette.com

Aja Goare - MTN News

Alright y’all. I finally got around to watching I Am A Murderer season 2, and today the murderess we’re talking about is none other than Lindsey Haugen.

I was really, really conflicted about whether or not I wanted to cover this story. Normally, I try and do female killers who are a little more distant in history, and this is a story that’s fairly recent. So I want to preface this episode by saying that I never want to glorify the killers I talk about in these episodes. Usually, I like covering figures that are a little farther back in history because a lot of the times these people aren’t around to, like, bask in the attention and it doesn’t feel quite so much like you’re giving them a platform because they aren’t around.

And, one of the things that I found really annoyed me when it comes to the shows like “I Am A Murderer” is the fact that these people that they interview are all those who are currently alive and have some kind of access to find out what’s being said about them and respond to requests for interviews and, if they ever are released, can be considered some kind of infamous celebrities.

And I know this isn’t a new phenomenon, but I think the difference between listening to people talk about murders committed and actually giving a platform to the murderers or murderesses themselves and listening to them try to justify it.

I think if they interviewed inmates who didn’t try to justify the murders it’d be different, but that’s pretty unrealistic I know. Another option would be to hold those interviews until after the inmate dies which at least would mean they wouldn’t get any kind of “fame” from doing these things, but also I know the reality in which that would probably not happen.

Everyone is always curious about murderers, especially about people they would never have expected to commit murder in the first place. I think the Lindsey Haugen story is no different, except that everyone is so surprised because she was a young, white, attractive female who’d served in the military and came across as seemingly “normal”.

So now I’ll get down off my soapbox, and let’s talk about Lindsey Haugen and this murder that she admits to have done and been sentenced to 60 years in prison for.

Lindsey Haugen was born in 1983. She grew up in Portland, Oregon and at the age of 15 she ran away from her house. She’d started to smoke weed when she was in high school and then by the time she was 16 she’d moved from weed to meth to heroin and was addicted.

When she was 17, she found out that she was pregnant. And that was when she decided to turn her life around, and moved back home so that she could be a parent for her son. She joined the National Guard, and things seemed to be looking up for her.

In 2013, she met her first fiancee, and he was extremely abusive. To the point where he almost killed her one night by putting her in a choke hold and cutting off her oxygen.

He was arrested and put in jail for domestic abuse in 2015.

Two months later, she met Robby.

Robert “Robby” Mast was said to be a “traveler at heart.” He basically took to the road and went everywhere. In the “I Am A Killer” episode, only his mom and stepdad were featured, but it seems like he was closer to his father and stepmother. He went back to visit them often, and was close to that side of his family, keeping in touch with them much more than with his mother and stepfather. He loved trains, to the point where all his nieces and nephews would point at one whenever it went by and say “look uncle robby”.

Lindsey and Robby met at a party. How she describes it was it was “an instant connection”. She maintains even now that their relationship was a mutual and loving thing, but a lot of people, including law enforcement, and Robby’s friends and family, don’t believe that she was really even his girlfriend at all, but more of someone he was seeing casually as she gave him a ride.

They began to travel together in August. They were driving from Washington to North Dakota. While on this trip, Haugen insists that Robby told her time and time again that he wanted to die. She’s quoted often as saying “I remember one of those mornings he woke up and just said, ‘have you ever been disappointed that you woke up and you’re still alive?” And also that he had asked previously for her to kill him but when she couldn’t, he said “I should’ve known that I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

Here’s what friends, family, and law enforcement believe is more likely. On their way to North Dakota, they stopped to talk to some of Robby’s friends. The friends said that she seemed to be all over him, while he wasn’t really that interested in her. He was, in fact, talking about his ex who was a mutual friend of theirs and saying how much he missed her. The friends claim that they’d been on and off for years and it seemed like Robby wanted to give their relationship a shot again. While Robby was saying all this, apparently Haugen was getting madder and madder. She herself admits to having arguments with Robby about this the rest of the trip. In her account, they made up and soon after is when he asked her to kill him.

This is probably one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve heard this garbage human make. Who would ask someone that they had only known for 26 days to kill them? And even if they did, the correct response would be to take them to a hospital so that they could get help, not proceed to murder them??

Throughout this journey, Haugen also admits that they were probably only sober 4 days total. Which means that, even if he had asked her to kill him which I highly doubt, she knew he was impaired.

So Haugen and Robby make a stop in Billings, Montana. There, they eat pizza and drink wine in the parking lot of a WalMart. According to Haugen, it’s there that Robby asks a second time for her to kill him. Which, she then proceeds to do, by putting him in a chokehold and covering his nose and mouth for the next 20 minutes. She insists that throughout the whole time she’s pulling her hands off and he’s putting them back on, but also that he was unconscious and seizing.

Listen, if you’re unconscious, much less seizing, you are physically incapable of putting someone’s hands on to your own mouth and nose and then proceeding to push them down to indicate you want them to keep going. That doesn’t happen. That’s not how physiology works.

But that was her story, and she told this to the police detective who brought her in the same night. She and Robby had attracted attention from customers shopping at WalMart due to the fact that they see the couple arguing and upset. After she killed him, she drove 8 blocks before pulling into a different parking lot and trying to resuscitate him. It was there that police caught her.

She basically admitted to having killed him immediately, but insisted on her version of events-that he’d asked her to kill him and etc.

When th detective interviewing her asked why she did it, why she listened to him, she said that it was because she “wanted to know what it was like to kill someone with her own hands.”

In Montana, deliberate homicide typically carries a sentence of up to 100 years in prison.

The Yellowstone County Attorney's Chief of Criminal Operations Christopher Morris and Senior Deputy County Attorney Julie Patten said the 65-year sentence they recommended took into consideration all mitigating factors of Haugen's life.

Sometime after being put in jail, Haugen met Robby’s mother and stepfather. They are, ironically enough, involved in ministering to inmates incarcerated. They had written her a letter saying they forgave her, she wrote one back to them, and then all of a sudden this new relationship sprung up. They’ve admitted that even though Haugen killed their son, it feels as if they’ve gained a daughter.

Yeah. I know I’m not in their situation and shouldn’t judge or whatever, but that just sounds sickening to me. I can’t even imagine how it must make Robby’s father and stepmother, who are the ones adamantly against Haugen ever being released, feel.

Haugen right now is still serving her 65 year sentence, however, her first parole hearing is coming up within the next few years, and the outcome depends on input from the victim’s families. And you’ve got her being best friends with his mom and stepfather. When asked if that was why she had such a close relationship with them, she said”

“It’s just not the case. Their relationship means the world to me, but if I have to serve my entire term and I’m here until I’m 96 years old, that’s fine.”

Dori Greeson said it hurts her when people imply she didn’t love her son because of how close she is with his killer. She said forgiveness has given her more peace and release than holding on to anger

And that is the story of Lindsey Haugen.